Access to healthier choices can mean healthier living

Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune

Sami Deffala’s corner store in Englewood sets itself apart from others there with healthy fare including fruits and vegetables priced within reach of his customers, thanks to subsidies from the Inner-City Muslim Action Network.

Sami Deffala’s corner store in Englewood sets itself apart from others there with healthy fare including fruits and vegetables priced within reach of his customers, thanks to subsidies from the Inner-City Muslim Action Network. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

Mary Schmich: In tough Chicago neighborhoods, access to better food and exercise could mean better living

My neighborhood is a food and exercise utopia.

I have access to so many grocery stores that I wonder how they all stay in business. During the summer, I can walk to a farmers market twice a week.

In my part of Chicago — a safe neighborhood full of bike lanes, parks, gyms, Divvy bike stations and conspicuous exercisers — there are few good excuses for bad health habits.

Great swaths of Chicago aren't so lucky. With wealth inequality comes health inequality.

But even in some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, there are people working to make it easier to be healthy, and one day this week, Elissa Bassler, the CEO of the Illinois Public Health Institute, took me on a bike tour to show me.

"Where you live really has an impact on your health," she says. "Your ZIP code is a lot more important to your longevity than a lot of things."

And so, with three companions, we headed into Englewood.

We picked up blue Divvy bicycles at a bike rental station on South Halsted Street and pedaled west.

Over the next four hours, we biked in the shade of big trees, over the rutted roads, occasionally on an official bike path. Past the corner stores with the bars on the windows, past the joints selling fried chicken and catfish. Past some boarded-up homes and proud homes with well-tended gardens. Some people waved from their porches as we rolled by.

In 2006, Harry Rhodes and the Growing Home operation he runs started a farm on top of the cracked concrete in the middle of a residential Englewood neighborhood.

Ever since, organic kale, lettuce, tomatoes and all the bounty of a farm have prospered in territory better known for violence.

"The goal is to turn Englewood from a food desert into a food destination," Rhodes said, standing in front of one of the farm's hoop houses.

The farm not only supplies produce to farmers markets and local residents, it provides job training for low-income people, including released felons.

Rhodes and Sonya Harper, who runs Grow Greater Englewood, pointed out the abandoned rail tracks that border the farm. Plans are in the works to turn the elevated railway into a recreational trail. Parks and more farms would be alongside, bringing more jobs.

So far, the Wood Street farm has avoided the neighborhood's hazards, though a while back, someone stole a bunch of tomatoes and was selling them over on 59th Street.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday took another crack at launching a produce bus project that aims to bring fresh fruits and vegetables to parts of Chicago that lack them after a similar city-backed initiative failed two years ago.

Standing on the grounds of an old Bridgeport trucking depot that has...

Rhodes saw the bright side.

"I look at it as if we created a market."

Stop 2:A PlayStreets event

4 p.m., South Talman Avenue in Chicago Lawn.

In the middle of the street, kids were jumping rope, painting each other's faces, riding bikes and spinning hula hoops.

At one end of the closed block, the older boys played basketball with a portable net.

"A lot of people ain't know each other until they have PlayStreets," said Malique Joiner, 15. "They don't come outside a lot."

PlayStreets is a city program that aims to get people moving by closing off a street and providing them with play equipment and a safe space.

"More individuals are dying on the South Side of diabetes than of shooting," said Andrea Ortez, 25, who was overseeing the event.

Nevertheless, violence remains a chronic threat.

"I'll be honest," Ortez said, "these streets look very different after 8 p.m."

But for a few hours on this sunny afternoon, the block felt safe and festive, and before we rolled off on our Divvy bikes, a girl approached.

"Where can you get a bike like that?" she asked.

Stop 3: Cooking Matters

In the basement kitchen of a building on 69th Street, Lilah Handler and April Thompson explained the Cooking Matters program run by EverThrive Illinois.

The two of them go to places like hospitals, community centers and churches to give cooking courses, teaching the basics to people who may never have learned them.

Frozen vegetables can be more nutritious than old fresh ones. Here's how to make flaky baked chicken instead of fried. Here's how to hold a knife.

"If you don't know how to dice an onion," said Handler, "cooking can be very stressful."

His efforts were fortified when the Inner-City Muslim Action Network asked him to be part of its campaign for better corner stores.

"IMAN asked us to carry more vegetables," he said. "I said yes."

With the help of IMAN produce subsidies, he was recently selling a bucket of strawberries for 89 cents and an ear of corn for 25 cents.

A couple of weeks ago, he and IMAN sponsored a cooking demonstration on the sidewalk. Fresh smoothies were served.

His regular fare now includes julienne salad with chicken breast and fresh sandwiches with low-fat turkey.

It's healthy for the neighborhood and healthy for business. Whole Foods is moving in nearby.

"A lot of these corner stores won't be in business when the big guys move in," Deffala said. He hopes to survive by offering decent food with respect.

At the end of our biking tour, Bassler pointed out that of all the things we saw that contribute to better health in Englewood, there was one thing she deliberately hadn't put on the tour: doctors.

"We need to move away from the idea that if we just had more doctors and gave people insurance cards, that's going to improve health," she said.

Bassler hopes that the state legislature will include the Healthy Eating Active Living Act in its next budget. The act would use a tax on sugary beverages to pay for the kinds of programs we saw on our tour.